Project B2B

Timotheus · February 27, 2009

-How it all started-

Due to my thesis I will have to work on my pc a lot. I'm spending a lot of time on the pc doing stuff that doesn't really require a lot of power (browsing, office work, watching South Park episodes). My gaming pc isn't exactly a very 'green' pc, so I started thinking about creating a small office pc. I assessed what I would want it to do, and began the search for a compatible OS and system. I did some research on Linux, and found something very interesting: how small it can be. For a system, I was considering laptops, old desktops, but I found out something completely different and something you probably won't expect. Over the next few weeks, I will be fiddling with this new 'build', and maybe I will inspire some of you lot. The first post will be updated with every major change I make.

-Setup-

HP t5530 Thin Client

Specs:

Via Eden 800MHz

128MB SDRAM

VIA S3

64MB DOM module

Default OS: Windows CE 5.0

OS intended for use is Puppy Linux 4.1.2:

* Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.

* Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes.

* Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.

* Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes to extend life indefinitely.

* Extremely friendly for Linux newbies.

* Boot up and run extraordinarily fast.

* Have all the applications needed for daily use.

* Will just work, no hassles.

* Will breathe new life into old PCs

* Load and run totally in RAM for diskless thin stations

And guess what? We are working with a thin client here, perfect! I have been in the process of testing Puppy Linux for a few times on my own pc. It's solid, easy to use, and fits on my 256MB flash drive. That's because Puppy is a really small puppy, at 50-95MB. Additional programs will have it taking up more space. Adobe Flash took quite a chunk of space, and seeing that I might want OpenOffice running, there may be a retry with a 2GB USB drive.

The only problem is that my GFX card is unable to get Puppy to properly display widescreen resolutions. For now, the screen is a bit stretched. I think I might have to fiddle a bit with that to get it to work properly on the t5530, but I'm not sure: I don't have the t5530 yet!

UPDATE

Puppy has some trouble recognizing the onbard VIA chip, so 1440x900 is not possible.

I'm looking into other options, other distros, anyway I'll keep it updated here.

Now, on to the good stuff.

-Progress-

Step #1: getting Puppy from puppylinux.com. Completed.

Step#2: Giving it a try. Completed.

Burned the ISO to a disc, and rooted around (no lame pun intended) for a few hours.

Step #3: Installing on a flash drive. Completed.

Installing is easy as 1-2-3! Click for the instructions.

Starting from USB proved to be tricky, none of the options in my BIOS seemed to work. However, I created the stick with a boot record (just like a hard drive has). When I looked into the hard disk startup options, I found that I had 2 hard drive options: my trusty 500GB Western Digital running WXP SP3, but also the flash drive! I put the flash drive on top of the list, rebooted, and presto: Puppy Linux from USB. Where do you think I'm posting from?

Step #4: Getting the t5530 and a power adapter to get it running. Completed.

Well, I got the t5530 I now have it running on a power adapter from my external hdd, since the EEEpc adapter did not fit. I'm buying a new adapter maybe this afternoon.

I'm not totally satisfied, but it could've been worse.

T5530:

Major advantage: it's 100% silent. No fans, no HDD, just complete silence. Nice for a change :Just_Cuz_21: but the performance is somewhat lacking. Graphics wise it's OK, similar to looking at it on my own pc (without installing ATi drivers). I'm still trying to get the thing to properly recognize the VIA S3 chip, but haven't been able to, yet. Youtube videos or websites with a lot of flash will crash the browser. Watching Southpark is a jerky experience, I suspect the lack of a proper driver is the problem but I am not sure.

I have to say that the thing handles itself pretty well, but it could have been better. I might start looking for a model that is a little faster, but for the moment this will do.

Puppy:

The OS is simple, loads pretty quickly and is pretty user friendly as it is packed with a lot of useful programs.

However, it fails to properly display a 1440x900 resolution, it just looks stretched horizontally. Also, what hinders the browsing experience, is that I cannot save bookmarks, and that account+pass info is deleted with every reboot. Still looking into these issues.

Later today I will add some pics

Step #5: Take a look in Windows CE 5/6. Completed.

It's not much, and it's hard to find compatible programs.

Step #6: Getting the Thin Client operational via flash drive. Completed.

Have been more or less succesful.

Puppy runs, but Seamonkey was very unstable. The stretched screen annoyed me a lot.

Step #6,5: Changing the RAM to something with a higher capacity. Failed.

The RAM is on-board...

Step #7: Acquire a Compact Flash adapter, a compact flash card and the required 44pin cable. Skipped.

Step #8: Installing Puppy Linux on the CF card. Skipped.

Edited March 24, 2009 by Timotheus

Schot · February 27, 2009

Oh what an awesome choice Timo. Unquestionably the most attractive aspect of this project is the size of the housing. It's so tiny. View case. Love it!

I'm totally of the same frame of mind lately so I'm eager to see how you work things out Timo. Cool that you've opted for a Linux based OS and for your interests on what to use this extra pc for I think it's a great choice. Any opportunity to support Linux is a good one in my books. :Just_Cuz_21:

Looking forward to the next update dude.

Timotheus · February 27, 2009

What's so green about these thin clients is that they run on minimal power: the guy selling it measured a power draw of about 14 watts. My pc, not even that top of the line, will run at about 10 times that value. I do have some reservations regarding speed, but for now, it's all about the experience.

If I decide to stay with a flash drive-OS I might even buy an internal slimline dvd for the thing and make it serve as a media centre, who knows what the future will bring.

As far as Linux goes: the thing is, puppy is an OS that can be used from USB or any other removable storage. It's really easy to have something like that to toy around with, and being sure that your normal pc is safe. Another thing: it's free. You don't like it? Toss it out. Try some other distro. :Just_Cuz_21: That's the cool thing.

Edited February 27, 2009 by Timotheus

Zinsho · February 27, 2009

One other alternative, if you have a spare PC to run as a server (and I know not everyone does but it's worth noting) is that Puppy Linux and a few other lightweight distributions can be used as pure Terminal sessions. You just use the slim client as your dvd drive (if available), USB hub and then use the ethernet connection to connect to your server and benefit from the greater computer.

The connection on some of these Terminal sessions is actually quite good, I had one running from home to school (DSL at home as the uploader) and I was getting ~25 frames per second when trying to watch youtube remotely (for the purpose of seeing). I wasn't transmitting sound but that's because I didn't finish configuring it for that and didn't really want to open all the extra ports. Of course in a home network the ports don't have to be opened.

Hrm... now you've got me thinking.

Timotheus · February 27, 2009

UPDATE

Well, I got the t5530 I now have it running on a power adapter from my external hdd, since the EEEpc adapter did not fit.

I'm not totally satisfied, but it could've been worse.

T5530:

Major advantage: it's 100% silent. No fans, no HDD, just complete silence. Nice for a change but the performance is somewhat lacking. Graphics wise it's OK, similar to looking at it on my own pc (without installing ATi drivers). I'm still trying to get the thing to properly recognize the VIA S3 chip, but haven't been able to, yet. Youtube videos or websites with a lot of flash will crash the browser. Watching Southpark is a jerky experience, I suspect the lack of a proper driver is the problem but I am not sure.

I have to say that the thing handles itself pretty well, but it could have been better. I might start looking for a model that is a little faster, but for the moment this will do.

Puppy:

The OS is simple, loads pretty quickly and is pretty user friendly as it is packed with a lot of useful programs.

However, it fails to properly display a 1440x900 resolution, it just looks stretched horizontally. Also, what hinders the browsing experience, is that I cannot save bookmarks, and that account+pass info is deleted with every reboot. Still looking into these issues.

Later today I will add some pics

Timotheus · March 1, 2009

I'm sorry for the missing pics, couldn't find the cable to connect my camera to the pc :devil:

I will be adding them as soon as I can find the darn thing!

Timotheus · March 3, 2009

UPDATE

Well, I got the client running now so far the only issues I have run into are a browser that doesn't like flash heavy websites or large pictures, and non-changeable RAM.

Here are the pics I promised:

Trying the T5530

Look at the size of it!

A peek at the inside: I'm holding the 64MB flash D(isk)O(n)M(odule), in the background you can see the passive cooling and the memory chips which are soldered onto the motherboard

Concluding: step 6.5 won't be possible, and I'm still thinking about trying a bigger flash drive or trying a CF-to-IDE converter.

Edited March 3, 2009 by Timotheus

Timotheus · March 9, 2009

UPDATE

Well, things aren't going as I had planned. Since Puppy refuses to do native 1440x900, and uses a stretched 1280x1024, I started a search for other small Linux distros. One of the most promising, being Tinyme, refused to boot from a flash drive (kernel panic error). There are workarounds, but it's bothersome and I don't like that. Not to mention that GRUB F'd up my normal pc's boot record, so I had to do a system restore to get it to boot again. I don't know what went wrong, and I don't want to know :viking:

As another solution, I'm looking to swap my 19" 1440x900 for a 1280x1024 monitor. I dislike the 19"widescreen so much... The vertical area is just too small, not only with normal desktop work but also in gaming. And I don't want a bigger widescreen, so the choice would be easy then. However, it's hard to find oldskool 19"/17" monitors, new that is. I found a gal who wants to swap, but she wants to keep the custom stand of her monitor, which totally sucks because that would set me back €30-40 to get a new one since I don't want a wallmount bot a desktop stand.

I'm still looking at other distros too, so it might not be necessary. I'll keep this thread updated and my next post will show my linux-test-setup

Zinsho · March 9, 2009

Ubuntu will boot from a CD/USB key, however it is a full sized distro at 768mb or so. Although from what I've gathered if you run it using XCFE rather than Gnome or KDE you can strip a lot of that down, however you'd really need to do a custom installation of it from the alternate disk to manage that. (Which would mean installing it rather than just creating a flash disc).

You might want to look at some places like archlinux, it's a bit more custom configured so might manage to get what you want in a smaller size. As well at one point I remember seeing a site that created custom distros for you to download based on need... I can't remember what it was called but it built you an install file including software.

gogoblender · March 9, 2009

Beautiful work! The new comp is SO tiny.. love it. This is a great topic Timo. I've always loved hearing about what people's hobbies are. Sort of like their super powers ^^

Thinking of selling this as a kit?

gogo

Timotheus · March 10, 2009

Ubuntu will boot from a CD/USB key, however it is a full sized distro at 768mb or so. Although from what I've gathered if you run it using XCFE rather than Gnome or KDE you can strip a lot of that down, however you'd really need to do a custom installation of it from the alternate disk to manage that. (Which would mean installing it rather than just creating a flash disc).

You might want to look at some places like archlinux, it's a bit more custom configured so might manage to get what you want in a smaller size. As well at one point I remember seeing a site that created custom distros for you to download based on need... I can't remember what it was called but it built you an install file including software.

I've been looking at ubuntu already (xubuntu, with the XFCE you mentioned) but it looks as if it will be too much for this little pc. Archlinux is one of the others I'm looking at; fluxbuntu, DSL are other contenders. My main problem is the low amount of RAM and the fact that I cannot change it.

Beautiful work! The new comp is SO tiny.. love it. This is a great topic Timo. I've always loved hearing about what people's hobbies are. Sort of like their super powers ^^

Thinking of selling this as a kit?

gogo

Well I was hoping to get this thing sorted quickly, looks like it won't I wasn't prepared for this. Luckily I do have *some* spare time now, but I wasn't planning to spend this much time on this thing. Anyway, I hope things will work themselves out pretty qiopuickly now, as my time for getting this project done seems to be running out...

And no, no selling it as a kit

Timotheus · March 21, 2009

Well, I don't want to mention all the trouble I've seen up until this point, but it's safe to say that this client will never have me running all the things I need. I cannot get OpenOffice or FF3/FF2/Opera9 installed, and that basically stuffed things up bigtime. I've tried some fixes, but it just seems to all come down on the 128MB RAM, that's nonexchangeable. I can't get my own pc to boot from the USB drive, and neither does the family pc. That leaves me unable to get either OpenOffice or FF3/FF2/Opera installed, thus leaves me unable to get it in the shape I want.

Also, a major pain in this system (to me) is that somehow Puppy Linux seems unable to display 1440x900 properly without a graphics driver, and that is the one driver that I cannot find. This basically stretches everything up, making websites look weird etc. I've mentioned this before, and I started looking at other distros, but the issue is that I can't get other distro's to run properly on this thing.

I got Windows CE 5 and 6 both running as they should, but to get Office software on it, would cost me €70. That's just too much, I'm not spending another penny on this thing. I've already put it up for sale.

It was a nice project, and Linux definitely peaked my interest, but so far my experience with it lead me to the following conclusion: there is a reason that you have to pay money for an OS.

While Linux has it's advantages (ie. it doesn't totally crash when something fails) it lacks basic functionality. Basic functionality, like understandable error messages. Basic functionality, like proper resolution support (we're in the 21st century, where by my guess about 90% of the LCDs sold are widescreen).

Basic functionality, like proper documentation on errors or faults you encounter.

Anyway, you might hear more from me in the future with another smal form factor project, but this one stops here.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Timotheus

Timotheus · March 24, 2009

And the project is definitely over now.

The t5530 is gone, I even earned 5-10 bucks on it. Not a bad deal.

Schot · March 25, 2009

No doubt this was at the very least a significant learning experience Timo. I love to tinker as I imagine you do as well. It's a shame though that you couldn't meet your goal. As a hobby goes there should be a limit on expense and this one seems to not be worth the investment for the outcome eh?

Looking forward to your next tinker toy. I'm still stuck on mine. Just haven't had a chance yet to go to that cheap pc shop...

P.s.

I just re-read the topic and love the way you formatted your initial post and the follow up pics. Gives a real sense of progression to the project. :evil:

Timotheus · March 25, 2009

No doubt this was at the very least a significant learning experience Timo. I love to tinker as I imagine you do as well. It's a shame though that you couldn't meet your goal. As a hobby goes there should be a limit on expense and this one seems to not be worth the investment for the outcome eh?

Looking forward to your next tinker toy. I'm still stuck on mine. Just haven't had a chance yet to go to that cheap pc shop...

P.s.

I just re-read the topic and love the way you formatted your initial post and the follow up pics. Gives a real sense of progression to the project.

I love to tinker too but it's kind of an expensive hobby when you think of it, parts going bad is not really good for your wallet... Not like collecting stamps or anything lol

Would really love to get a small office pc on the side of my big pc, but another thought creeping up on me is that I hardly game at the moment, my pc is kind of collecting dust. Well, not like I don't use it, because my study is getting busy again, but the power it holds is never released. The only gaming I do at the moment is with my GF, playing bust-a-move on the PS1 :evil: so I'm thinking of making my current pc a little less hungry. You know, underclocking, undervolting, a less thirsty GPU (I have a Nvidia 7200LE as a backup, since my motherboard lacks on board graphics).

I'm still planning to build a power efficient pc sometime in the future. Going 'mobile' (s479) is something I'm currently looking into as well

You can expect a new thread, similar to this one, when my plans will be realized, however, don't expect it the following months.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Timotheus

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